


Stabbing Pains

by Seer_of_Soul



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Stabbing, Whump, based off tumblr text post (linked inside), cloud gets stabbed a lot, leon's poor heart can't take much more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25412071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seer_of_Soul/pseuds/Seer_of_Soul
Summary: Cloud gets stabbed a lot and Leon's poor heart can't stand much more of it. But he's not going to turn his friend(?) away when he's hurt.
Relationships: Cloud/Leon (Kingdom Hearts), Squall Leonhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84





	Stabbing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> Based off this post on tumblr  
> [X](https://artdefines06.tumblr.com/post/623499280304521216/generalgrievousdatingsim)

There was silence. Just for a moment, though the moment was one that seemed to stretch on for ages, there was silence. Leon would have felt his blood run cold, if his heart hadn’t stopped. The entire world seemed to hold its breath. 

Cloud blinked solemnly, looking down at the blade sprouting through his chest. Leon felt his heart crawl up into his throat. He was… vaguely aware of Aerith gasping sharply beside him, of the whispering howl of the wind that swept through the cliffs of the Crystal Fissure, of the shaky inhale from Yuffie, her hand fisted in the back of his shirt. His heart beat strongly against his throat. 

Cloud calmly stared at the sword, then slowly raised his hand to wrap his fingers around the blade. Leon could only watch in mild horror as Cloud pulled Sephiroth’s sword out of his chest, inch by inch. 

Cloud glared, almost offended, at the silver-haired man, then chucked the long sword over the edge of the Fissure. Sephiroth looked less than amused, and almost instantly summoned the sword back his hand. So, the move didn’t do much, but the point was made. 

Sephiroth and Cloud glared at each other for a long moment, communicating in some unspoken language. Then, surprisingly, Sephiroth broke first. His feathered wing ruffled, almost irritably, and he partially turned away. “Let us continue this another time, Cloud.” He practically purred Cloud’s name, but he’d wrapped his wing around himself and was gone under a smudge of darkness before the spike of wrath could tear its way through Leon and probably make him try to take that shiny silver head off its shoulders. 

Aerith moving was what brought Leon out of it, the rage and burning glare fixed on where Sephiroth had disappeared vanishing the moment she let go of his arm and cried “Cloud!”

Yuffie was off him a moment later too, stumbling a little as she ran towards Cloud, who was somehow still on his feet. Aerith hovered around Cloud, almost like she was afraid to touch him. Yuffie stopped a good distance away too, like she thought the same. She scrubbed her fists over her eyes, sniffing and sobbing over how stupid it was that Cloud always made everyone worry over his stupid butt. 

Leon didn’t run to Cloud, at least he didn’t think he did. He moved towards him in a haze, his eyes fixed on the wound, but somehow never leaving Cloud’s face. Cloud’s eyes turned slowly to meet Leon’s as he came to a stop next to him. 

“Are you…,” Leon started hesitantly. 

Cloud’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed. Leon somehow managed to catch him before he hit the ground. Yuffie shrieked, screaming, “Cloud’s dead!”

Aerith stumbled forward and put both hands on Cloud’s chest, pumping him full of so much healing magic that her knees gave out. There was a moment filled with panicked panting before Aerith looked up with a wavy smile. 

“I closed the wound… mostly.” She put a hand to her, clearly light headed from the sudden extreme drain of magic. “We should still….”

“I’ve got a first aid kit!” Yuffie cried, pulling a little bottle out of one of her pouches. She opened the bottle to reveal an assortment of alcohol wipes, gauze, butterfly bandages, and surgical thread, already threaded on a needle. 

Leon, half impressed and half dismayed, nodded stiffly. “That’ll work.” He held Cloud’s head and shoulders in his lap as Aerith sewed the wound closed in the front, then rolled him over for her to close the wound in the back. He trusted her hands more than his own at the moment. His hands were still shaking when he carefully lifted Cloud in his arms to carry him home.

Why was he so scared? 

~

After a tiring fight with the heartless, Leon was left gasping for breath. He put his hands on his knees and took a moment to just breath. Cloud stood a few feet away from him. He’d dug the tip of Tsurugi into the ground and was leaning heavily against it as he worked on catching his breath too. Leon gave him a crooked grin, which Cloud returned with a wry smirk. Leon straightened up, wiping the sweat off his brow with the bottom of his shirt. 

“You doing alright, Strife?”

Cloud hummed affirmatively, cracking his neck. “Yeah. You?”

“Fine.” Leon passed his gunblade to his other hand and shook out his sword arm. 

“You sure you’re alright,” Leon asked, eyeing the way Cloud was putting his weight on the sword. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, but….

“I’ll be fine.” Cloud shook his head, making the blond spikes of his hair bob weightlessly through the air. “It’s just-“ His eyes went wide and he was in a ready position in an instant. “On your seven.” 

Leon whirled, his gunblade slashing through the air before he even saw what was behind him. The blade ripped through a heartless, sending the crystalline heart within it up into the sky. About three dozen more were crawling down the wall of the Fissure, apparently drawn by the sounds of their previous battle. 

Leon aimed his blade and took three quick shots. Two heartless exploded into dark dust, but his third shot only hit the third one’s arm. He growled through his teeth and the heartless were on him. He felt Cloud come to stand beside him, felt the air ripple as he swung his sword through the heartless. Lionheart tore through them just as well, and in a few minutes, they had dispelled all the heartless. 

Leon let himself take a deep breath, rolling his shoulder. He looked back at Cloud and felt something uneasy settle in his stomach. Cloud’s face was paler than usual, and beaded with sweat. “Don’t tell me you’re getting too old for this…,” he half joked hesitantly. Cloud shook his head, straightening up. 

“No, just tired.” 

“Alright.” Something felt off, his stomach rolled with uncertain tension. Something was wrong. It was nagging at him almost painfully. “Well, I think we’ve decimated the heartless population enough for one day. Let’s call it and head back.”

Cloud nodded and sheathed his sword on his back. As he passed, Leon felt a cold shiver raise his hackles. He reached out, unintentionally. His fingers brushed Cloud’s side, coming away wet with something. Cloud winced and a hiss of pain escaped through his teeth. 

Leon stared at the red staining his fingers and immediately grabbed Cloud by the shoulder. Cloud looked away from him, the way he usually did when he didn’t want to talk about something. But Leon wasn’t interested in talking. He pulled down the zipper of Cloud’s shirt, ignoring the weak protests. 

Two gashes in his side, bleeding sluggishly now. One of the heartless must have gotten a lucky shot on him when Leon wasn’t looking. It wasn’t uncommon for the heartless’ forms to pass through clothing to claw directly at the skin beneath. Leon felt the blood leaving his face as he looked at the wound, knowing it’s been slowly knitting itself back together. That meant it had been there for a little while. Cloud had probably gotten it a few fights back. Which meant he’d been fighting with an open, probably very painful wound for a while. 

Leon grit his teeth, straightening up. “Cloud.” he growled.

“I’m fine.” Cloud didn’t look at him, wouldn’t look at him.

“Cloud, if you’re injured you need to tell me!”

“I’m fine. It’s already healing on its own.”

“That’s not the point! You need to tell me so-”

“So you can ‘protect me’ right? I don’t need protecting, _Leon_.” 

Leon felt his hackles raising, an anger rising inside of him. Of all the stupid, shit-brained-! “No, I need to know so I can _cover_ you, like a team is supposed to! If I don’t know you’re hurt, I can’t cover you where you need me to. And if you’re hurt, you can’t cover me where I’m expecting you to. That’s what a _team_ does, Cloud!” He was seething, probably overreacting, but Leon couldn’t bring himself to care. 

“That’s what it means to be on a team. We cover each other’s weaknesses. And we trust that our team can cover ours….” He was hurt. And he didn’t know why. Did Cloud not say anything because he didn’t trust him? Or did he think Leon would coddle him? Or see him as weak for getting hurt? The last one should have been ridiculous, given the scar that ran through the center of Leon’s own _face_.

Cloud ducked his head, still not looking at Leon. Leon growled as he dug through his pockets. He’d stopped carrying so many, since Aerith was almost always close by, but he found a potion bottle and shoved it into Cloud’s hands, snapping “Don’t do this shit again,” before turning around and stomping away. 

He needed space. If he stayed here, he knew he would end up punching Cloud in the face. And he really didn’t want to do that. Leon growled under his breath as he left. 

Why the hell was Cloud so infuriating sometimes?

~

Leon woke up to the change in presence in his room. He wasn’t on his feet, not yet, but he was awake the moment the dark shape appeared in his bedroom doorway. The small bit of moonlight that streamed through the window, and his eyes being well adjusted to the dark, let him see the familiar silhouette, haloed in wild, pale blond hair. “Cloud?” Leon breathed into the silence of ‘closer to sunrise than the dead of night’.

Cloud shifted his weight a little, the pale glow of his blue eyes peering through the darkness of the room. He dipped his head a bit, muttering a strained sounding “Hey” then promptly faceplanted the hardwood. 

Leon was out of bed and at his side in an instant, kneeling next to Cloud and rolling him over. His hands were immediately soaked in warm blood, the red shockingly vibrant even in the darkness. He pulled Cloud’s shirt up, seeing a very deep stab wound in a very (infuriatingly) familiar shape. 

He lifted Cloud in his arms and hauled him to his bed, not caring in the slightest about his sheets. Flicking the light on as he passed, he pulled a loose potion bottle out of his bedside dresser, uncorking it with his teeth and pouring the potion directly onto the wound. 

Years of training, and frankly years of living through ‘every moment is a life or death’, turned his panic off for the moment. His hands moved on their own, cleaning and stitching and binding Cloud’s wound, front and back. He wasn’t the healer Aerith was, so this was all he could do on his own. Leon was just thankful it wasn’t through his chest this time, but his side instead. 

Some time later, though he wasn’t really sure how long, Leon sat back, feeling light headed and tired. Cloud was sleeping peacefully on the unbloodied blankets Leon had dragged from the closet. The blood-stained ones were tossed to the side, because he really couldn’t be bothered with them right now. Leon looked out the window, seeing the sky slowly lightening to a light grey over the rooftops. 

He sighed softly and pushed himself up to start the coffee. He’d get some for Cloud too. Leon didn’t expect him to sleep too long, despite his injury. 

As he stood in front of the machine, watching the coffee drip slowly into the pot, Leon wondered how long he’d known how Cloud liked his coffee. It must have been between the time they met in Traverse Town and… he had no idea. He couldn’t recall the first time he’d made Cloud’s coffee for him, between all the late nights they hadn’t bothered to sleep, all the patrols where one or both of them showed up with coffee for the other, and all the times Cloud just crashed on his couch after a grueling fight or exhausting spar. 

Leon stared blankly at the brewing coffee, feeling like each drop sent a new ripple across his mind. When had they decided to start sparring together? To patrol together? When was the first time they’d spent all night working, or Leon spent working and Cloud stayed with him to keep him company? Those all felt like… things they’d just always done. Not all the time, no, not when Cloud was always jetting off to parts unknown on his manhunt, but those were all things that just happened when they did. 

Except lately. Not since that last fight in the Crystal Fissure. Not since Leon had yelled at Cloud for being stupid and reckless. 

He wasn’t sorry, not in the slightest. And he still stood by what he’d said. But…

The slow, creepy realization dawned on Leon: he’d missed Cloud. It had only been a little over two weeks, nowhere near the longest stretch of time Cloud had disappeared for, but Leon had missed Cloud. 

What the hell did that mean?

~

Leon returned to his bedroom with two mugs of coffee. He wasn’t as surprised to see Cloud awake as he was that Cloud was awake and still where he left him. Cloud was staring up at the ceiling, one hand tracing over the bandage Leon had wrapped around his stomach.

“Strife,” Leon said softly, in a cold greeting. 

Cloud’s head turned and he looked at Leon strangely for a long moment. When he didn’t say anything or move other than that, Leon hesitantly set the mugs down on his bedside dresser and sat down in the chair he’d pulled up next to the bed. “Do you have a concussion?”

Cloud shook his head slightly, his eyes still not looking away. 

“Do you need water?”

Another head shake.

Leon scowled. If Cloud didn’t want to talk, he couldn’t make him. So he just let the moment sit quietly. Slowly, Cloud’s mouth opened and shut, his eyebrows furrowing. “I…,” he breathed, his voice cracking like he was parched. 

Leon took the mug of coffee off the dresser and held it up to Cloud’s mouth. Cloud pushed himself up on his elbow and took the mug from Leon, taking a careful sip. He lowered the mug to his lap and licked the coffee off his lips. Leon stood up and picked up his own mug, taking a long drink to distract himself. 

Cloud scooted backwards until he was leaning against the headboard, cradling the coffee in both hands. He stared into the mug like it just might have all the answers he was looking for. 

“I…,” Cloud started again, “I heard you got hurt….”

Leon blinked, surprised. “I fell off a ladder and strained my ankle. It wasn’t even a sprain or a twist.” That had been a few days ago. “It didn’t even need magic healing, just ten minutes with an ice pack.”

Cloud nodded, eyebrows pinching together. “I know… I know that now, but… for a minute… I thought it was bad.”

“Is that why you came back?” Leon asked, trying not to sound as bitter as he felt. 

“Mm,” Cloud hummed noncommittally into his mug. He set the mug down in his lap, staring blankly at the wall across from him. Leon was starting to get worried. Did he actually have a concussion? Was he sick? He debated just calling Aerith when-

“I’m sorry.”

Leon blinked, “What?”

“Before, and… all the times before that, I… I didn’t realize… what it’s like when you don’t know someone you care about is hurt.” Cloud stared down at his mug in… shame? “I didn’t realize it… hurt you when I… did that. So, I’m sorry.”

Leon felt stunned. Of all the things he thought might come out of this… this wasn’t it. “Apology accepted.” He set his empty mug down on the dresser, feeling like a weight had dropped off his shoulders.

Cloud visibly relaxed. “You were right about covering each other too, about knowing what each other can cover and what you need to cover instead. I- I think I get it now, so….”

Cloud cut himself off when Leon wrapped his arms around him and hugged his shoulders tightly. After barely a moment of hesitation, he draped his free arm across Leon’s back, pressing his nose against Leon’s shoulder. 

“Thank you, Leon….” Leon felt himself smile, a warm feeling spreading through him. Oh, that’s what it was….

He was in love with Cloud, wasn’t he?

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a three am writing impulse and ended up taking several days to actually do. But it was a lot of fun to write! -w- This is the first thing I've written for Strifehart and I'm happy with how it turned out! It feels nice to finally contribute to this ship that I love so much. ^<^ <3
> 
> Let me know what you think!


End file.
